Recommended Posts

Steam 'Early Access'users will receive this update Monday, November 13th, 2017. Xbox 'Play Anywhere' players can also expect this patch to hit their consoles or Windows 10 machines Monday, November 13th, 2017.

Update 221 is a followup to the Excavation update, including an update to rover connections, some quality of life changes, and bugfixes/ multiplayer fixes. While we continue work on a major December milestone and large content update, we wanted to still ship a patch on our monthly cadence.

Updates
You can find these updates in 0.4.10221.0, the current build of the game.

Added rigid joints between rovers
The old rover joints created all sorts of physics issues caused by the individual rover bodies flipping over, colliding with other rovers in the train, and generally just being extremely wonky. The new joints are much more rigid, allowing for more stable rover trains overall. As always, rovers are still a work in progress, and we hope to have a complete overhaul of their physics, maneuverability, and controls when we get to our 1.0 launch. Note: Rover trains are now limited to 4!

Patch Notes now on the home screenBoth Steam and Xbox "Play Anywhere" users should now see a "Patch Notes" button on the home screen of their game. This first iteration will point to Excavation Update changes, but in the future this link will change dynamically and have "message of the day" type information.

Contextual Quick Stow enabled
This feature is a small but extremely helpful one. Currently Astroneers have three kinds of storage. Backpack space, Aux Slots (top of the backpack), and the terrain tool slots. Things like augments are useful on the terrain tool or stored in the backpack, while solar panels and small wind vanes want to be on the top of your backpack to be useful. With this new behavior, while quick stowing items, (Shift + Mouse 1) on PC (Right Trigger + X) on Xbox items will naturally try and slot to the place that makes the most sense. This should also work with items currently in your inventory, so swapping a solar panel to your aux slots should be a bit easier now!

New music and sound implemented

[AS-1822] - Implement New Music Assets

[AS-1839] - Audio - Update "negative" UI sound effect

[AS-1861] - Audio - cleaned up foley SFX

Oxygen/Power/Resource Plinths removed from planets

The "infinite" power and oxygen towers in the game have been removed. They were first implemented as a "fix" for players that got lost, but their frequency changed the exploration experience in a bad way. Exploring far away from your base should be viewed as a trek that requires planning and preparation. You can still find oxygen and power on cave walls, but otherwise, plan ahead or bring a vehicle or meet almost certain death.

If you want to see the other stuff that happened this month that didn't make it, check out our vlogs for weekly insight to what the team is doing. Of particular interest is Spencer's work on basebuilding, which caused him to visually explore what monster truck rovers might look like:

Bug Fixes

[AS-1752] - Hydrazine Catalyzer now shows the name of the resource (Ammonium) required to make Hydrazine.

[AS-1779] - Fixed an issue where the Fuel Condenser wouldn’t fill an entire canister with fuel in five battery cycles.

[AS-1803] - Fixed an issue where empty canisters some times display as full on Client

[AS-1805] - Fixed a Multiplayer issue where the Mineral Extractor module would become temporarily invisible for the Client player.

[AS-1806] - Fixed an issue where the ‘'Enclosed 1-Seat' would be un-selectable in Vehicle Bay after the player cycled away from printing it.

[AS-1815] - Player can no longer jump infinitely off of items on the deform tool with the backpack open.

[AS-1817] - Fixed issues with inconsistent power usage by Augments.

[AS-1818] - Objects dropped from backpack upon death are no longer buried when the player returns, instead items that were slotted into the Deform Tool are now found on a Deform Tool near the body.

[AS-1819] - Fixed some awkwardness for players getting out of vehicles while they were upside down.

[AS-1830] - Fixed a major Multiplayer issue which prevented players from rejoining a game after they quit to the Main Menu.

[AS-1831] - Fixed a Multiplayer issue where Tether lines would not go dark for Client players when they were disconnected from an oxygen source

[AS-1835] - Fixed a visual-only bug in Multiplayer games where the Mineral Extractor canisters looked full for Client players

[AS-1856] - Crane controls once again work for gamepads!

[AS-1868] - Fixed a crash in Multiplayer games that occurred when Client players left the game while seated in the respawn Habitat.

[AS-1906] - Instances of the hilarious, yet annoying Rover Rodeo have been reduced, but may still occur in extraordinarily laggy network situations.

ROADMAP HIGHLIGHT

The following major features are continuing during development, but are not included in this release. This month we spent a ton of time working on "spec" documents for future features like weather/climate, hazardous discoveries, new UI and more.

"Just brought online our first always-on @astroneergame headless dedicated server in the studio. It gets automatic updates from daily builds." "Still a ways from a public roll-out, but a big step closer."

Carl has continued work on dedicated servers, and we are moving towards the goal of having them roll out to the larger community!

Modularity (Basebuilding)

The power system and basebuilding system is making lots of progress. As mentioned above, basebuilding had some unanswered questions around moving base modules, which spawned visual explorations for xl rovers that can house and move base modules.

Research 2.0

We have internally playtested, revised, and subsequently playtested another version of the new research 2.1* gameplay loop. We are now balancing and tweaking it for the larger rollout.

Terrain 2.0

Terrain 2.0 tech is moving along well! We now have the new tech in-engine and work has begun on authoring tools, which will allow us to start crafting new biomes, caves, & planets! There has also been a ton of work to figure out what weather (& weather related dynamic events like lightning, sandstorms, radiation, heat & cold) might look like in an updated planet in Astroneer.

Next month's CU is going to be a big one, as we are celebrating our one year anniversary of launching into early access, and are looking forward to announcing a major milestone in Astroneer's development! Thanks to everyone who has been sharing, reporting bugs, and providing feedback on the current state of Astroneer! I am looking forward to sharing our plans for December soon :).

Considering the visibility of the patch notes from now on, I'll take this opportunity to make more people aware of our Discord server:

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Updates
You can find these updates in 0.3.101221.0, the current build of the game.

Joe, we're guessing this is just a typo, and the actual version number is 0.4.10221.0... can you confirm? Unfortunately the update has not made it yet to the Windows store, so the in-game version number is still showing patch 219.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Joe, we're guessing this is just a typo, and the actual version number is 0.4.10221.0... can you confirm? Unfortunately the update has not made it yet to the Windows store, so the in-game version number is still showing patch 219.

totally a typo! this is correct

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Note on "hard" connections, it is much harder to drive buggies with trailers on out of holes. The inflexibility of the connection makes the vehicle very rear heavy and I usually had to disconnect all sections and drive each out in turn, even up a ramp.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

May I ask what's being done about performance though? I tried playing on my new Xbox One X thinking it would be better and it still gets very, very laggy (well under 30fps) most of the time. It's honestly what keeps me from playing the game at all most of the time. And that is on a new save. I didn't even have anything but tethers built. How am I supposed to explore if tethers (I'm guessing here) are causing massive framerate issues?

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

BIG PROBLEM! Affects new saves and old as well. Oxygen tanks aren't, well, oxygen tanks! (I explain more below, but they say "ITEM, TYPE" then "Item, Description") Went into a cave like a normally do, to find some dead explorers and relieve them of their goodies (which respectfully, they no longer need). Hooked up an oxygen tank, the most important find imho, but it didn't fill. That's a game killer for me. I don't like running around all the time hooked to tethers or vehicles, they slow me down and restrict my freedom to much. As to the "plinths" being removed? Doesn't make much difference to me, tbh they hadn't been properly functioning in my games for months, the wouldn't refill properly the way they used to, so the utility was quite limited other than getting me out of a few close scrapes here & there So far in the one new game I've played, it "feels" like surface oxygen crystals are more common, I'm fine with that and think overall that's a better choice so long as they do repopulate frequently. The game actually has had an overabundance of power for a long time imho (so much organic at least most places, not to mention so much of it in caves plus the crystals on surfaces as well, how anyone runs short of power is beyond me lol). It's oxygen that's always the big crunch item, and that's why the tanks are so crucial. I hope we will see larger oxygen tanks before final release. Ones that are 2x or compressed somehow, not taking up so much space in our packs. That's one disadvantage to the roaming exploratory lifestyle, the tanks take up too much space.

One thing I am grateful for, the oxygen consumption rate seems to be normalized back to where it was, or at least, it's much better. Difficult to compare when I can't play old versions of the game, but I know back late Spring sometime myself and several other players agree something happened (intentional or not) that significantly increased the oxygen consumption rate in game. I went from doing just fine, to suddenly dying all the time. It was a very frustrating situation, one that I never really adapted 100% to, despite playing the game 100s and 100s of hours. It was just too punishing. When you started out you barely had enough oxygen to get much beyond your Hab to find starting materials. I had a few times where within my spawn range I simply couldn't get to one item (compound or resin) and back without suffocating. I could've just started a different game, and sure it's procedural gen I get it, but that's still frustrating when it happens to you, and you consider yourself a "veteran" Astroneer So thanks Devs, was very pleased to see when I spawned into a new game, my oxygen wasn't turning into vapors immediately and I actually had a bit of "breathing room" for once to gather a few supplies. I think it's in a pretty good place now, but I'll get a better sense of it as I play more games with the new rate Now, if those tanks would just start working...

So I'm guessing someone perhaps forgot to enter the proper code for them or something. Oxygen tanks don't work and aren't recognized as such, saying instead "ITEM, TYPE" and underneath "Item, Description" Now while I don't know anything about coding, that sure sounds like a programming issue to me. Please fix ASAP and please don't wait until the next update this is game breaking in terms of playing the game & enjoying it. I run with average 3 oxygen tanks in my pack everywhere, every game I play. I'm usually not on tether nor am I using a vehicle on average. I enjoy the gameplay freedom Astroneer brings, I couldn't imagine the game without this as part of the experience.

I certainly look forward to the day when on Xbox the game is more stable allowing better and greater use of tethers so that the game doesn't slow to a crawl. It's not there yet, nowhere near in fact. I think it has become worse over the last several updates. I'm not sure why exactly, though I have a few ideas about the potential causes (and I'm sure it's multifactorial, the new soil containers modules, etc no doubt must play a role as well as that's more objects in the world, more to track, etc).

(1) there's the new beacon system, which I do love, but it may play a role. We now have not just beacons but ones that retain color information as well as one setting that strobes. They also seem to have improved visibility and perhaps had an added height (stalk) as well (not sure about the last bit) all of which has helped a great deal. There are only a few distinct times I have tend to have trouble with beacon visibility. Clouds obscuring beacons remains an issue, and while the bolder (more opaque? thicker?) stalk for beacons has helped this situation, there are still times when clouds are bunched up on the horizon nearly obscuring the stalk. Also doesn't help the clouds & stalk are both white, so can be very difficult to distinguish from one another. The other time I have difficulty is when there is extremely bright light in the game world, but particularly as the light draws near the horizon (so right after dawn, or as dusk approaches). The light is very intense (as one would expect, it mimics our own starlight in these respects, maybe we could get a toggleable "solar shield" like Astronauts have on their suits to help with the glare? Hmm? Maybe?) and makes it very difficult to see anything on the horizon in the direction of the light, but beacons (including home, vehicle) extremely hard to make out. Light also interferes with colors picked for beacons I've noticed, idk if that's something that can be remedied, it's not a priority of course, but it would be nice if the colors werent always changing at different times of day under different lighting conditions As an aside, I still find the game to be overly bright in daytime and extremely dark at night; this may be an issue players using TVs run into more than those using monitors, but I have no way of knowing that. I have tried many different settings (I have a Sony Bravia 4K 65" TV, I use bias lighting because I play more at night, I use Game. Mode, I've tried adjusting backlight, gamma, contrast, and fiddling with all sorts of other settings most of which are left off as recommended when gaming). I do use the game's brightness but it's more a blunt instrument than anything else. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them

(2) paining bases, terrain. Now that we have all sorts of tool mods at our disposal, I've used the Terrain Analyzers more than ever before. I have found myself wondering however, if my painting my base in colorful vibrant camouflage patterns doesn't also contribute a little bit to decrease performance. I'm sure it's not a major player, but I do think a possibility exists.

(3) all the new little stuff, it adds up. Things like worklights, new mods (I don't use the boost, but some do I'm sure). Now we have soil containers, I'm mostly just collecting them so I can always build if I need to and I die in some remote location and need new stuff (sorry Devs but I really dislike the whole "you die you lose everything" situation, it seems too punitive especially at this stage, you're just not gonna convince me this was a necessary move, games are for fun and hunting down my corpse for an Inhibitor because I don't have the means to make another yet, yeah that's just not fun at all, same with my oxygen tanks if I lose those I'm unlikely to be able to make it back out to my body without them, unless I use a thousand tethers that will likely crash my game anyway, or use a vehicle that I don't enjoy driving because it gets stuck on every single rock in the universe while thinking forward is reverse and vice versa on Xbox anyway, so yeah, a little "help" or "cheat" whatever to call it is ok if it makes the game tolerable imho but that's the end of my little spiel). All those items, plus tethers, beacons, and whatnot, how could these not impact performance? I'm sure they must, especially on machines y'all lovingly refer to as "lower end PCs & Xbox" As an Xbox player, I'd love to see this game run much better and always am thankful when y'all can improve gamepad control. I'm sure that's never an easy task, but us Xbox players sure do appreciate it whenever y'all are able to direct some attention our way I started back in late January and wow the controls are much better than they used to be! I remember having to really battle to use the terrain tool and it's was quite dreadful, but if you reall love a game, your persevere

I recall watching a VLOG that talked about streamlining objects within the game, using a bunch of colored balls that remained in sync no matter whether you saw them on your screen. Don't know which one it was, but I'm sure it would be obvious which VLOG that was. Anyway, I thought it was an amazing proof of concept, but also thought we'd have heard something about improvements of this kind coming out sooner rather than later especially to help those "lower end PCs & Xbox" While I know I can't ask for a timeframe or ETA, I wonder if any of the Devs could speak about the progress in this regard, such as how work on this is going? I'all admit hearing about this big content update has me more worried than excited at this point. I want to be excited, but as the game stands now it's not enjoyable after a while on Xbox, and the problems just multiple with co-op. I don't even play co-op. I don't really even leave Terran. Still waiting for the performance to improve markedly before I waste much time building on other planets, because right now it just wouldn't be worth it (to me, everyone is difffent I know, I'm not saying it's not worth it for other people). So I do hope as part of this next big update there will also be BIG performance improvements baked in for Xbox One because without them, we won't be able to enjoy them. I want to be excited for the new content, so I hope the Devs can maybe say something about this to allay some Xbox players concerns. Thanks as always everyone, it's always a bit of s long read but I hope it's worth it & I love this game!

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

One thing I've been meaning to add, just haven't got around to it, something from Patch 182 got broken and it's one of those "quality of life" things that over time has become annoying. The"decorators don't spawn/respawn" on deformed terrain? Yeah please look at this because it's totally not working and hasn't or quite some time. It's really frustrating too, because I like to keep my base neat after I've smoothed it out (a sometimes quite laborious process, believe me, at least on Xbox using a controller). I like to craft an Inhibitor (which brings me to ask, why did y'all remove those from cave goodies? It's pretty much all just dynamite, and who needs tons of dynamite? Please put some inhibitors back in the loot table? The Terrain Analyzers never worked so I'm fine with those staying out, and apparently some have issues with Wide & Narrow mods too. So maybe just Inhibitors then? Pretty please?). I know anything I've made, bridges, slopes, my smoothed base, before I can turn around there's grass & crap grown all over it again (in the case of caves, it gets even worse, I've found not only rocky stuff like stalagmites & stalactites which some may enjoy I find them a nuisance, but I've even had poison pots spawn directly in the middle of a bridge spanning across a vast underground cave system, way up in the "air" so to speak, now that's REALLY crazy!). I really would appreciate not loading into my game, one where I've already painstakingly smoothed my base and rid it of organic "debris" then first thing I'm compelled to do is "mow the base" again When convenient please fix this back the way it was supposed to be. People aren't going to run out of organic just because pixelated grass doesn't respawn on their base In fact, I must admit I've never understood the game logic behind how the decorators work. Seems to me if during the base building process (or any terrain-adding process really) if I cover over grassy bits or other "decorators" including rocks, why wouldn't they disappear? They're covered, and if I do that to a block of resource, the game "eats it" meaning "it's gone" forever basically. Of you cover real grass with a bunch of dirt, most likely it's gonna die as well. It doesn't come back. Sure you might get a few weeds and such grow in it, but that's more likely because the dirt had some weed seedlings in it already, or seeds landed on the dirt via wind or traveled by other means (birds, etc) and happened upon a new growing spot with light and nutrients and voila. But the grass that's covered, pretty much smothered & destroyed if it's a significant depth of dirt, enough to completely cover the grass by a foot or more. Usually in the game I'm covering these decorators (grass etc) by what I'd gauge is 1-3 ft at least, hard to say of course and it's all relative, but yeah I don't really see why that should snap back to the top at all, much less return from the dead after being mowed down the first time by an Inhibitor pass. I know many will say, this isn't important, but the little things do matter and when the game is release people who play for the first time certainly will judge the game on annoyances like these. Maybe not everyone, but some will. Like I said, I'm just pointing it out because a past update had fixed a lot of this, and now it's broken. As always, thanks for reading!

Because im such a fan of the Inhibitor (total genius!) I'd love to ask if possible please make it so that use of the Inhibitor doesn't knock over the tethers. It is incredibly time-consuming to be runnning the Inhibitor back & forth all over and it always is knocking those things over. It's worse now that storms knock them over too (it seems anything knocks them over in fact, I think they just topple over for no reason at all now). I preferred tethers that stayed put, tbh, I kind of liked "ghost tethers" at least they were reliable You can't mine near them, can't clear decorators around them, any strong wind even when the storm doesn't come close and they blow down, they're wimpy shadows of their former selves I want industrial strength levitating tethers!

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

If you have a fuel condenser/Hydrazine canisters attached to your base, can it refuel any space ship that are connected to the base via the large cable ? The Fuel Condenser would run constently (if the power isn't a problem on the base) and the Hydrazine canister that are connected to the base would empty.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Great update, really like the tighter connection lines between vehicles. I flipped one vehicle and all 3 flipped back to normal ( all 3 flipped due to storm). The oxygen tank is now unusable and crashes the game when crafted. It is also misnamed as in the previous post above.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Major Cumulative Update? So the Build will get a Bump to 0.5.x? Can't wait to see what will come. Space Stations? Rover Racing Tracks? Shuttel Lazers? Or... a Hero Cap?
I'm still searching for the Space Snail. Keep up the good work and thanks for the Monthly updates. Best xbox Play anywhere title in my opinion!

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Flying trucks are back.... get back to base fully loaded on Arid ....turn my back a the D*$m trucks gone to the junkyard in the sky...... I blame it on Aliens that have taken control of SES and ExoCorp.

Edited November 15, 2017 by KeeblerOrc

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

When consuming power for the deform tool, it is now or could of been in the previous update that when you're connected to a rover or a truck, it no longer consume power from the rover or truck first but your backpack and small batteries instead. This is quite annoying because you end up in the dark with the flashing red showing that your backpack is empty. I don't understand why this was changed from previously where the consumption of power came off the truck or rover first.